Ibn Khaldun: The Birth of History and The Past of the Third World PDF
Preview Ibn Khaldun: The Birth of History and The Past of the Third World
THE BIRTH OF HISTORY AND THE PASTOFTHETHIRD WORLD 1L! U t! 11 LI U U U DU. L2713 1984 YVES LACOSTE is an eminent and internationally respected geographer. He is the editor of the well-known French journal, Herotte, and the author of a number of works including The Geography of Underdevelop ment and Unity and Diversity of the Third World. Yves Lacoste Verso Ibn Khaldun: The Birth of History and The Past of the Third World British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Lacoste, Yves Ibn Khaldun. 1. Ibn Khaldun, ‘Abd ar-Rahman ibn Muhammad I. Title 907'.2024 DI 16.7.13 First published as Ibn Khaldoun: Naissance de I’Histoire Passe du tiers-monde © Librairie Francois Maspero, 1966 This translation first published, Verso, 1984 © Verso Editions, 1984 15 Greek Street, London W1V 5LF Filmset in Plantin by Red Lion Setters London WC1N 2LA Printed by The Thetford Press Ltd, Thetford, Norfolk ISBN 0 86091 084 9 0 86091 789 4 Pbk Contents Translator’s Note Preface 1 Part One : The Past of the Third World 11 1. General Characteristics and Fundamental Structures 13 2. A Politician from a Great Family 34 3. From Condottiere to Historian 53 4. The Myth of the ‘Arab Invasion’ 65 5. The Crisis of the Fourteenth Century 79 6. The Development of the State 92 7. The Case Against the Townspeople 118 Part Two : The Birth of History 133 1. Thucydides and Ibn Khaldun 135 2. Historical Materialism and Dialectical Conceptions 151 3. The Emergence of the Science of History 159 4. Historiography and the Rationalist Heritage 172 5. The Effect of Religious Reaction 181 Conclusion 194 Notes 202 Index 212 Translator’s Note Quotations from Franz Rosenthal’s translation of Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, Bollingen Series XLIII, New York, Pantheon Books, 1958, 3 vols., have occasionally been modified to take account of variations between it and the French translation used by the author: Les Prolegomenes historiques d’lbn Khaldoun, tr. Baron De Slane in Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliotheque Imperiale— Academic des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres—vols. XIX-XXI, Paris 1862-1868. Material not included in Rosenthal is indicated as ‘De Slane’. Histoire des Berberes indicates quotations from Histoire des Ber- beres et des dynasties musulmanes de I’Afrique septentrionale, tr. Baron De Slane, Algiers 1852-1856, 4 vols. David Macey. Preface Ibn Khaldun? The encyclopedia gives the following information: ‘Ibn Khaldun (Abd al-Rahman), the most famous of Arab historians (born Tunis 1337, died Cairo 1406)’. In North Africa, the name of Ibn Khaldun1 still evokes the splendours of the past, even for relatively unsophisticated people. But outside the Arab world, most educated people familiar with the major problems of our own time have never heard of him. He is known only to specialists in the history of the Maghreb and in the development of the science of his tory. Those historians and philosophers who have had occasion to read his work praise him unstintingly: ‘Ibn Khaldun was the greatest histor ian and philosopher ever produced by Islam and one of the greatest of all time’.2 ‘The work of Ibn Khaldun is one of the most substantial and interest ing books ever written’.3 ‘He has Conceived and formulated a philosophy of history which is undoubtedly the greatest work of its kind that has ever yet been pro duced by any mind in any time or place’.4 Such comments are more than justified: Ibn Khaldun’s work marks the birth of the science of history and is perhaps the most prestigious product of what can only be called the ‘Arab miracle’. Ibn Khaldun wrote at a time when what had once been the centre of medieval Arab civilization was in decline. He had no real followers and his work was forgotten for centuries. For my part, I believe that, if Ibn Khaldun’s thought is to become more widely known and if it is to be integrated into contemporary thought, we have to do more than simply restore him to his rightful status as one of the founders of History. We are now witness ing major and totally unprecedented events: throughout the world, 2 people are faced with vast and tragic problems which mankind has never previously experienced. The reconstruction of the past is therefore not an end in itself. It is a matter of contemporary interest and importance. The content of a work of the past can only be integrated into an active intellectual movement (one which leads to some political understanding of the times in which we live) in so far as it has contemporary resonance and increases our understanding of the problems that face us in the latter part of the twentieth century. Exploring the thought of Ibn Khaldun does not mean straying into medieval orientalism, plunging into the distant past of an exotic country or complacently entering into a seemingly academic debate. It does not mean turning our backs on the modern world. It is, rather, a means of furthering an analysis of the underlying causes of the most serious of contemporary problems. As we shall see, in his analysis of economic, social and political conditions in medieval North Africa, Ibn Khaldun raises a number of fundamental historical problems. His work sheds light upon a very important stage in the history of what are now under developed countries. He describes very complex social and political structures whose development determined a lengthy historical process and whose effects are still being felt today. In combination with equally determinant external causes, those structures led to colonial domination in the nineteenth century, and colonialism led in its turn to the present situation of underdevelopment. Provided that they are analysed with care, the most important and original features of Ibn Khaldun’s work can now be seen as a major con tribution to the study of the underlying causes of underdevelopment. It must, however, be stressed that the relationship between the work of the Maghrebian historian and underdevelopment is far from straight forward. It would be not merely simplistic but quite wrong to think that in the fourteenth century Ibn Khaldun described the characteristics of an objectively underdeveloped country. He was studying medieval structures which slowed down or blocked social, political and economic development. It was only several hundred years later that those struc tures combined with outside influences to facilitate colonization, and colonization determined the appearance of the phenomenon of under development. Fourteenth-century North Africa was no underdeveloped country. Contrary to the opinion of certain writers, underdevelopment has not always existed and does not date back to ancient times: it is a relatively Preface 3 recent phenomenon. We have to be careful not to confuse the situation that ‘traditionally’ prevailed in North Africa and much of the rest of the world with modern underdevelopment. The underdeveloped countries have of course’inherited many features from the past, but those features are now integrated into a radically new combination. Traditionally, what are now underdeveloped countries were characterized by an equilibrium between a very slow rate of demographic growth and an equally slow rate of economic growth. Whereas ‘development’ can be described in terms of an economic growth rate which since the nineteenth century has out stripped population growth, ‘underdevelopment’ in all Third World countries is characterized by a population growth which greatly out strips the increase in the resources available to the population.5 The astonishing demographic growth rate which has characterized almost all Third World countries over the last few decades is a result of modern health programmes. But the inadequate increase in resources is a direct or indirect effect of factors which block the exploitation of exist ing resources, rather than of any natural lack of potential. Most of these factors relate to colonial domination. And in North Africa colonization was made possible by structures which had existed for centuries. A discussion of the present situation may seem out of place here and irrelevant to a study of Ibn Khaldun. Nothing could be further from the truth: if we are to analyse the past adequately, we must have a clear pic ture of the times in which we live. Such considerations enable us to perceive a basic and much older problem which is of direct relevance to the period and the countries studied by the great Maghrebian historian. Colonialism itself cannot be regarded as the primary reason for under development: it is neither a necessary nor a sufficient historical cause. Europe has not always had an economic and social lead over the rest of the world by any means. In historical terms, the technological develop ment of Europe is a relatively recent phenomenon which appeared only in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In other parts of the world, economically advanced societies existed hundreds of years earlier. By the Middle Ages, China, India and the Arab countries had reached a techno logical level which was equal to or even in advance of that achieved in Europe prior to the Industrial Revolution.6 We have, then, to explain why the scientific and technological advan ces made by the great states of Asia and Africa in the Middle Ages did not lead to a process of economic development comparable to that to be observed in nineteenth-century Europe. This is a very complex question,
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